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September 23, 2016

SPOILERS in OrcusPosted by Abi Sutherland at 02:08 PM * 311 comments

Summer, child,
Come on with me to Orcus
Leave your mother
And her worries behind.
Your dearest wish
Will lead to adventure
So come, little Summer,
It’s leaving time.

When you’re in Orcus
Birds going to speak like people
Women will shape-change
And frogs grow on trees.
But what’s that behind you?
It’s the Queen-in-Chains’ servant.
The Houndbreaker’s hunting;
Time to fly.

This is a thread to discuss, speculate about, and squee over Ursula Vernon’s new web serial Summer in Orcus, without worrying about spoiling it for people who aren’t caught up.

Note that the introductory lyrics are entirely drawn from the blurb and the first episode; I don’t know any more about what’s going to happen than anyone else. Except Ursula, I suspect.

(Also, it’s free on the web, but your attention is of course drawn to the Patreon and Paypal links on the front page.)

My comment in the open thread was, "As soon as Summer saw the walking house over the garden fence I thought, "Ooh, this is going to be bad."

I followed a link from MetaFilter to the Introduction page, so I hadn't seen the mention of Baba Yaga in the first sentence on the main page. But I recognized the walking house and knew who it belonged to.

I read Chapter 2 last night. I sympathize with Summer's inability to identify her heart's desire. I'm 62, not 11, and I still don't have a firm grasp on my heart's desire.

One of my top 5 favorite Bujold quotes is from Miles in Memory: "You can trade anything for your heart's desire except your heart."

Quill #4: It looks to me like the house is a "good servant" -- that is, it knows what its boss's long-term goals are, and serves them regardless of her moment-to-moment persnickityness. And I notice that Baba Yaga makes an assortment of threats, but hasn't actually punished the house that we can see (and she was willing to admit that it was right!). That, combined with the door-knocker's attitude, makes me suspect that BY is surely a rough character, but not blatantly evil or insane (despite milking her reputation).

That said, offering someone their heart's desire, when they don't actually know what that is... that's not particularly good, either. Possibly she is "fey" -- unconstrained by our notions of morality, but perhaps bound by her own strictures.

@David Harmon on fey. Two of the sources in the Wikipedia article describe Baba Yaga as "may be altogether ambiguous" and "often exhibits striking ambiguity". My previous encounter, in OSC's Enchantment, shows her as unambiguously evil.

Can't help but think of one of my other favorite riffs on Baba Yaga, the witch Brume from McKillip's In the Forests of Serre. Another character who turns out to be much concerned with the heart's desire and the pitfalls that inhere.

I wonder whether part of the "ambiguity" of Baba Yaga is that the cultures that produced the folklore (and for that matter, our current mainstream culture too!) are unsettled by the idea of a woman with power. A king who might kill you if you displease him isn't "ambiguous"; he's just powerful.

There's also the "power leads to ignorance" thing: In general, women understand men better than men understand women, because they need to -- for personal safety, let alone social position. Men can dismiss women as "those mysterious creatures", because they can afford not to learn about them. Mutatis mutandis for blacks vs. whites, gays vs. straights, employees vs. bosses, and so on.

Bruce, H., #1: I've always been rather fond of one from Zenna Henderson: "She never quite managed to forget that glimpse of what heart's desire looks like when it comes at the cost of another's heart."

(It's from one of her non-People stories, "The Anything Box" in the collection of the same name. I'm quoting from memory, so it may be inexact.)

I *loved* the stained glass "flipbook". With the triumphant saint (and angel! Was the angel only chasing the saint to make Summer pay attention?) at the end, that we get to see but Summer does not.

Interesting that she picked a frog over a unicorn. Unicorns are fantastical and unreal and powerful and vulnerable. Frogs are about as down-to-earth.... erm, pond... as you get. But frogs... have transformed. They've become very different than the tadpole they hatched as. They're free to leave the pond. Is Summer's heart's desire growth, change, and freedom?

And a weasel companion. Weasels are vicious predators... but they're also small and vulnerable. Not the worst mentor for a girl on her own. Weasels know when to fight and when to hide.

I also loved the stained glass "flipbook." And I hope Ursula's muse will suggest some companion art. I'd especially like to see the saint and the joyous angel dancing a jig at the end (where Summer didn't see).

Yes, the frog suggests a much more pragmatic orientation than the unicorn. I hadn't thought about the transformation aspect, but that's interesting.

Jacque, this time I'm bookmarking "weasel help"; I went to show it to someone and my google-fu let me down....

My cat Dante is not QUITE as helpful as a pair of weasels, but apparently every project from hemming a pair of slacks to fixing the inlet pump of the dishwasher is improved by a feline nose. Right in the middle of things. At all times.

I was getting a How Many Miles to Babylon vibe out of Baba Yaga lighting the candle and then telling her to get a move on and get "out" before (the candle burned down? Strongly implied).

This pair of paragraphs rung particularly true for me:

And at that point, Summer said to herself, I shall be in so much trouble that it will not actually be possible for me to get in any more trouble, so it doesn’t really matter how long it takes.

There is something very freeing about knowing that you are in the worst possible trouble that you can be in. No matter what you do, it cannot possibly get any worse. Summer would get home and be grounded until she was eighteen, and even if she dyed her hair pink and got her ears pierced while in Fairyland (somehow she didn’t think they did that sort of thing in Narnia) she couldn’t be grounded any longer than that.

I loved the first part when I saw it on Ursula's LJ years ago, and I'm enjoying it even more now. I'm already champing at the bit for more to read, and we're barely into it yet.

Bruce H. @ 33:

Summer has been trained very well not to ask for what she wants, yes. Setting that (and the author's own love of frogs) aside, there are some other interesting things about the choice, too. If she'd picked the unicorn because that really was the best choice for her, she wouldn't need to go on this journey, although maybe another one would be indicated. If she'd picked the unicorn because she thought she was super special (but wasn't), her bones might make for a charming towel rack. A frog is, on the one hand, very down-to-earth and ordinary. On the other hand, frogs are a symbol of change and transformation. This might well be reinforced with the frog tree and the tadpole acorn. We'll see!

Elliott Mason @ 34:

I giggled at the line about pink hair and pierced ears not being done in Narnia. I'm not sure if that would get you kicked out with Susan, but it would probably put you somewhere similar.

The thing I wondered in Chapter 4 was that Summer is going from tree to tree, and then off with Bearskin and Boarskin, without paying much attention to her starting point so that she can find her way back.

Perhaps she assumes that, by the usual nature of portal stories, she'll end up going home by a different route anyway?

OtterB, this is a child who has never wandered alone without supervision. Certainly never gone to a camp, and most likely not even to a park by herself. Getting lost in the woods is a purely theoretical thing to her; while if she stopped to think about it the possibility might occur to her, right now she's caught up in the novelty of it all.

And, anyway, Baba Yaga's house had vanished, so knowing where the hallway was isn't likely to help her get home.

I thought about that too, but I agree with Cassy B. that since Baba Yaga's house used to let out into the alley, and then let out into the hallway, going back through the hallway is unlikely to bring her home. (Might bring her back to Baba Yaga's, which seems like a good way to become a snack.) So she has to go elsewhere, and with no familiar landmarks, one way is as good as another. Of course, this could become a problem later if she needs to go back to the Frog Tree...

If she needs to get back to the Frog Tree, she can ask someone for directions -- clearly there are a lot of "someones" wandering around. But given her latest gift, I rather suspect that she will eventually plant the new Frog Tree.

A friendly lock, a talking weasel, a magic acorn... "what have you got in your pocketses", indeed?

I don't know the stories of Bearskin or of Boarskin, but Donkeyskin's tale is quite dark indeed. And Ursula's description of her inclines me to think that she's referring to the same tale of incestuous rape that I know of.

They cleaned the supper dishes but Summer only has had tea? Or is this "tea" in the British sense, which can include food?

Robin McKinley did an excellent version of the story called Deerskin, which I don't tend to recommend to people without a ton of content warnings, but which I've needed more than once to scour my own heart clean of old business that haunts me.

Deerskin is one hell of a book - in different senses depending on where the reader is at. There are times I couldn't read it, certainly.
...

"I was a chieftain's daughter" subtly suggests to me that Bearskin, Boarskin, and Donkeyskin come from different versions of the story told in different ages or places, sort of the way in _Mythago Wood_ and its related books the same archetype appears in multiple forms.

And it also strikes me how delicately their stories are suggested with:
"Apparently it could have been a great deal worse, if these women had to put on animal skins and flee into the desert."
Younger readers who don't need to understand that will likely go right on past. Adult readers and others who need to can take something away from those words.

The other, on an entirely different note, was to wonder if the Waystation is by the sea. Because if it is, and for some reason its staff or its usual clientele are cetaceans, it would be a Whale Waystation.

Clifton's idea about the relationship between Donkeyskin, Bearskin, and Boarskin makes sense to me (and explains why, if they're from different fathers and places and times, they might call each other "sister").

I'd been wondering about Bearskin, because I know a Bearskin fairy tale as well, but it's about a dude who makes a bet with the devil, and doesn't fit this Bearskin.

(It's an interesting example of the "bet with the devil" genre, because the dude wins the bet and gets worldly success without losing his soul, but the devil still comes out ahead of the game.)

Cassy, #50: I looked up Donkeyskin (which is available to read online here), and was rather struck by the elements it has in common with Cinderella -- the assistance of the fairy godmother, the virtuous maiden forced to do the most menial of work, the ring* which was too small for any other woman in the kingdom. It's common enough for folk songs and folk tales to borrow bits from each other, and I suspect that's what happened here.

* It doesn't say so, but you will not convince me that it wasn't a magic ring -- nor that Cinderella's shoe wasn't magic either. There's just not that much variation in the human phenotype; without some sort of magic involved, there would certainly have been at least one other woman who the ring/shoe would have fit.

Among many beautiful images and lines, I also have to particularly admire this pair of sentences.
"The notion of these three women — who were sort of interesting, but sort of frightening — owing her anything was a little scary. She wouldn’t mind help, but she didn’t want them to get resentful, the way that her mother did about the credit card companies."

And the Grimms' version, linked at the bottom of that page, has the heroine going incognito to a ball at the palace.

Incidentally, the tale was adapted for television as part of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, under the title "Sapsorrow". (Sapsorrow is the name given to the princess.) As I recall, it moves swiftly over Sapsorrow's reasons for leaving home and concentrates on what happened to her afterward.

And the Grimms' version, linked at the bottom of that page, has the heroine going incognito to a ball at the palace.

Incidentally, the tale was adapted for television as part of Jim Henson's The Storyteller, under the title "Sapsorrow". (Sapsorrow is the name given to the princess.) As I recall, it moves swiftly over Sapsorrow's reasons for leaving home and concentrates on what happened to her afterward.

The line in Chapter 5 that I keep coming back to is Bearskin's farewell to Summer:

“Go quickly or slowly, near or far, in fear or courage—but come back to us.”

That has a touch of the numinous for me. It reminds me of The Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf sends Bill the pony home before the Fellowship enters Moria, saying "Go with words of guard and guiding on you."

Tom Whitmore @46: Interesting. I'd never heard of Pinkwater till you mentioned him, and I've read the children's and young-adult sections of several different libraries back-to-front-and-back-again, and my whole life is within his writing career.

He's not even British (not that that stopped me; used bookstores meant my Grandfather could source me hand-me-down copies of Canadian editions of Penguin kid novels).

I too admire the ambition of the weasel! And share, in a quiet sort of way, not so much Summer's scorn at the puns as relief at the, ah, waystation not quite being Made Of Puns as it originally appeared.

I cannot help but thinking of the witch from Brave, and her shop full of bear-themed wood carvings. If you're not doing magic anymore, might as well do a strongly themed shop!

Elliott @69 -- I don't know how I missed recommending him to you at the various conventions where I was selling books to you. Iconoclastic, idiosyncratic and able to turn a trope on its head in just a few words so that the world never looks quite the same again. Try The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death for a sample -- there are a lot more if you like that. That kind of changing of how I see the world is what Vernon seems to be doing in this story.

Definitely Borgel, Lizard Musice, Yobgorgle.... but The Big Orange Splot is the one that changed my point of view about arguing politics. It probably works better to connect to people by way of their dreams (what they love, not so much night dreams*) rather than talking about best rules.

On the other hand, I don't know how to connect with people through their dreams, but it might be worth working on.

OT rave: I don't usually buy hardcovers, especially new. But based on Hope Jahren's blog writing, I made an exception for her memoir, Lab Girl. And indeed, this book is holy-cow good. Once I've finished it, I'll almost surely be passing it on to my niece and nephews.

I have to say, while I might second reading Daniel Pinkwater in general, the reasons I read him and the reasons I read Vernon/Kingfisher bear approximately no resemblance whatever to one another beyond "clever enjoyable work, often YA, makes me laugh (when it's intended to)".

Just a caveat for anyone off to look for his stuff expecting to see more work that's like Summer in Orcus.

Lenora Rose @ 81: True, true. I don't actually get a Pinkwater vibe so much from T. Kingfisher books. I was just responding to Elliot's not having read any Pinkwater yet, which seemed to demand immediate first aid treatment.

(Although Digger maybe has a touch of resemblance to Pinkwater, what with the oracular slugs and all. Hmmm.)

When I was binging on T. Kingfisher's other books last week, I was actually thinking that something about them strongly reminded me of Peter Beagle, particularly Bryony and Roses. Summer in Orcus, not so much, at least thus far. Probably I should just appreciate them as Kingfisher.

Nancy Lebovitz @76 connect to people by way of their dreams
As it happens, I've just been reading MCA Hogarth's Dreamhealers series, in which a pair of budding esper xenopsychologists develop a technique for this, among other things.

There's something interesting going on here that I can't quite put my finger on. I want to say it's a reflection on the different forms abuse can take.

Summer hasn't had any physical abuse to deal with, but she's been emotionally manipulated by her mother for her entire life. The Wheymaster, on the other hand, has to deal with physical threats. Even Grub seems somewhere on that spectrum. He's clearly a bully, but I'm also reading (possibly imaginary) hints that he gets it from above.

For all that he acts cowed for Grub, it's clear from the last chapter that the Wheymaster really is downtrodden and just trying to make do. Summer and the Wheymaster, in their own ways, help each other to start the journey of their own healing.

Magic cheese for the win! :-) And another hint that this isn't going to be your ordinary hero-tale; most heros depend on luck. It should be interesting how Summer's choice plays out. Interestingly, WP notes that turquoise has an ancient association with luck and protection, so she might be covered there anyway.

Speaking of the story being tightly bound to Summer's perceptions, and thus possibly not mentioning things that seem obvious to Summer, is anybody else getting the impression that Summer is a person of colour?

Paul A, her hair made me consider the possibility, yes. But it's artfully mentioned in a throw-away line focused on the weasel, that makes it easy to miss. Clever, clever Ursula.

And HOW is she going to get out of the cave? Lunge for the rings? And if she manages to do that, it's harder to go up than down over a cliffside. Is she going to climb down somehow? The cave is deep enough to sit in, but there's no hint that it's got a tunnel to leave through....

I expect there will be a flash of a blue something that will lead her in the right direction.

As for "grace", the more I think about it, the more intrigued I am to see how that comes out in the story. Does it mean "grace" as in "graceful", smooth in movement and word, not clumsy, or does it mean "grace" as in "get to heaven by works or by grace"? Or other?

There's another definition of grace: I think of it as... well, kindness. Care. Mindfulness. Generosity. Helpfulness.

My own personal guess is, rather than the overtly physical meaning of grace, or the overtly spiritual meaning of grace, it's this third grace that will become important in the story. I could, of course, be entirely wrong.

I don't necessarily think Ursula will shy away from the spiritual meaning; she had an angel giving hints to Summer earlier, after all. And swinging on those rings to get to the cave might take a certain amount of physical grace.

But the Wheymaster/Waymaster helped her from kindness and care. And that, I think, will become the theme of the book.

Paul A. @ 92, Cassy B @ 94:
Starting from the beginning again, to see if there are other hints of that, if one reads with that in mind - suddenly her mother's over-protectiveness made more sense in context. This year I've read a number of black parents opening up about how terrifying it is to raise a child knowing they could be shot suddenly with no cause, physically attacked by an authority figure, arrested for something completely trivial (like getting a milk carton at the school cafeteria) and so on and so on. Maybe a part of her mother's restrictiveness is her struggle to cope with that.

Independently, noting Baba Yaga's comment in chapter 1, which I forgot to call out before: “Besides, it’s not strangers you need to worry about—it’s the ones you know that get you.” All too often.

Probably because of the Narnia callbacks, and specifically remembering The Silver Chair, I was ready for something dreadful to happen when Summer stood on the edge of the cliff and thought about what her mother would say if she saw her standing there.

This is not that book, and a very different something happened, but I feel like maybe the resonance with the other scene it superficially resembles is not entirely accidental. This book is very much in conversation with Narnia.

Speaking of which, rereading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland... and its sequels while having Summer in Orcus in my head made me delightfully aware of parallels and echoes and resonances. (It seems that upon first arriving in the otherworld, it is common to meet with a Mythic Threesome who will point out your initial direction and/or mission.)

Because Summer had paid attention in class, she knew that the rock was the type called sedimentary, which lays down in long bands at the bottom of prehistoric lakebeds. But something odd had clearly happened here, because the bands were not flat but diagonal, as if some enormous force had picked the rock up and dropped it down off-kilter.

Is it just me (because of our discussion upthread), or with Reginald is Ursula playing a bit with the concept of grace? He dances... and he offers help, unconditionally. Two types of grace, there.

(Hoopoes dancing doesn't seem to be a natural history thing; just a Reginald thing. I looked for videos to see if they (like many birds) did a courtship dance, but all I find are males feeding females. Which I think we can disregard, because Summer isn't a hoopoe...)

Echoes of Wodehouse. Wodehouse world is clearly an alternative reality, but I had never thought of it as a portal fantasy. Maybe there are characters who go there and come back again and I have just never encountered any of them?

Summer is showing wisdom beyond her years: Although Reginald clearly wasn’t a child, he also wasn’t quite a grown-up as Summer understood it. Summer was pretty sure that real grown-ups weren’t supposed to run away into the country to hide instead of paying their bills.

Dave Harmon, but she's still child enough to believe that Adults Can Fix Things. Which actually says something positive about her mother, now I come to think of it. Her mother may have been overprotective and paranoid.... but her mother didn't destroy her faith in adults.

Dave Harmon: Ursula is actually doing SiO under her alias of T. Kingfisher.

Yes. I take that as another sign that this story is going to get considerably darker before it's over, as the introduction warned. The blighted and corrupted wheat seems to be the latest pointer in that direction.

The part of me that gets picky about etymology wants to point out that a wolf who turns into a house wouldn't be a were-anything, because "were" is the part that comes from an old word meaning "man". He ought to be an ern-wolf, or something of that sort.

But the part of me that's read a lot of trashy fantasy is aware that that boat's well and truly sailed.

I'm liking the warm-dry-full as she wakes up, gets warm, and gets fed. I can so feel that transition. (It's amazing how much physical misery cuts into one's ability enjoy one's adventure.) My only quibble is: if you want to get warm, you keep the fire small. ('Least, that's what my-brother-the-boy-scout told me.)

I can't help but wonder if the house-hunter idea came from a child's overhearing adults without the usual context and imagining a, well, hunter of houses (scary music).

Jacque @135: The way I heard that (when I was a Boy Scout, actually) was, "[person of natural, integrated ethnicity] build small fire. Keep warm by sitting close. [person of heedless, exploitive ethnicity] build large fire. Keep warm by carrying wood."

shadowsong @136: Good question! Maybe BY's house was a chicken that turned into a house at night (or some other magically significant time) and got trapped in a silver cage. Maybe that's why the wolves are acquainted with her. If BY's house retains some features of chickenness while it's a house, maybe the wolf will also. If Summer could turn into a house at night, she might suffer less from the cold and the dew.

I'm giving myself this evening to wallow in misery and then I start applying for fellowships and getting the novel in shape to submit (NaNoEditMo?). My student loans, alas, have no sympathy with my ethical scrupulosity.

And the author answers my #127 with a figurative "You're overthinking this". ;-) There was actually a hint back when the wulf-hus was introduced, and told us that even transforming within the cage would have damaged, but presumably not destroyed, him.

I just want to pull out this line and look at it again: "It is a great relief, when one has thrown away normal life in search of their heart’s desire, to know that one is doing it right and isn’t going to get yelled at for going the wrong way."

(Also, when Glorious suddenly leaps off to hide from the (presumably) hunters), it's really nice that Summer wasn't prepared and nearly fell off. Scratching one's nose is not something that one normally sees in novels... and it's such an ORDINARY thing.)

Meanwhile, on topic: I love Glorious, in both forms. The line I wanted to wear around my neck till Tuesday was this one: But [the wolf's howl] was also very beautiful. It made her heart ache with its wildness and its sorrow and she loved Glorious for being exactly what he was.

This is an amusing Tumblr post about theoretical school houses to be sorted into--which I post in this thread simply because I was delighted and surprised to see that the eighth house listed would fit Glorious perfectly, should the wolf decide to pursue a formal plan of education.

Lenora Rose @ 163 - I got the same thing earlier (on two different computers/browsers), as did a friend with whom I was chatting. On further examination now, it seems to be the whole of the 'Writings' section, though other sections appear to be fine.

All the talk about geography and the sea with nothing on the other side reminds me of other fantasy lands you couldn't leave or get to by normal means. Oz, for instance, with its deadly desert surrounding it, or Fantastica that, by definition, had no borders.

On another note, I am always grateful for characters who say a well deserved "bullshit!" to the idea that, if the villain hurts someone, it's your fault because you didn't do what they wanted you do (submit, surrender, stop fighting, stop protecting others from them, stop existing). I'm revisiting Diane Duane's Young Wizards series (via the videos at MarkReads.net), and there's a part towards the end of High Wizardry that hits that particular sweet spot for me too.

Nicole @ #169, amen to that. I was thinking about that very issue after reading the chapter, and it occurred to me that the test of that belief is this: would the villain stop being a villain if you died, surrendered, etc.? Or would s/he just continue on to the next victim?

And it's a whipsaw between amusement... who knew that the Department of Motor Vehicles imparted such important life lessons?... and despair.

The Queen In Chains. Is it the Queen that is the problem.... or the chains? (Or, of course, it could be something else, but we are up to chapter 15 now; a little late to introduce a new antagonist....)

Not to mention that dealing with her mother's histrionics gives Summer an edge in dealing with the clerk's. She knows what tactics are likely to settle someone down who's just pitching a fit because they can.

Several years ago I had a walk with three women who had entered the U.S. as refugees; as we got comfortable together they began telling war stories. They spoke of how difficult it was when social workers tried to convince them that they needed to ease up on their children; that their kids were safe here.

They all said, from the heart, that they knew, knew, that NOTHING would ever keep their kids safe. In sight, and even better, physically touching was the only thing that eased off their anxiety.

We can infer that Summer's mother is learning to cope with an overwhelming trauma. That she's eased up enough to let Summer out of her sight has to be seen as a major step.

Summer is doing the best she can with hugs and reassurance.

If this were the mother's story, Summer's heart's desire might be getting her mom past that pain.

I clicked "next" too many times and ended up on her front page, where I discovered that Elizabeth Bear had provided a great blurb: "Vernon is the right thing to read in times of woe, in times of joy, and when you are considering planting an invasive non-native and know you probably need a stern talking to."

Teresa, so good to hear about it from the horse's no longer abscessed mouth, so to speak. And that you're solidly on the mend.

(Apparently I cannot spell "abscess" without outside intervention. Is this one in your demonic spelling test? Or maybe I'm not as good a speller as I think I am.)

I managed not to sit around watching the results come in last night mainly because I was at my roller derby league's board of directors meeting, being the secretary and getting utterly exhausted at the gumbo ya-ya multithreaded style of discussion going on there. Then I came home and found my husband had the scotch out on the table and clearly not just because he likes scotch. It was that bad. I took a look at the latest on Five Thirty Eight, then went back out into the living room, said, "I need a hug," and spent the next five minutes just weeping into his T-shirt.

Then I thought something along the lines of, "Damn this, I'm going to do good work now, they can't take that away from me," and spent the next couple hours getting my meeting notes presentable.

I didn't want to get up and see the official announcement this morning. Have been crying off and on. But have also been spending the day in that same spirit of "they can't take this away from me" protest: Doing the good work of daily writing, doing dinner-anna-movie with my husband, focusing really hard on how the weather's still beautiful and the leaves are still doing the autumn thing and the sun indeed rose upon the world despite everything.

A dear friend and teammate posted to our league's facebook group that she's so glad she spent election night at practice, doing ridiculous and scary and bad-ass things on skates, and how nothing about how the election turned out can take the joy of that away.

I really appreciate all the hopeful and determined things people are posting, about being kind to each other, about the quiet importance of telling stories and doing good work, about fighting every step of the way against those who would do harm.

Buddha Buck @184 - Terry Pratchett was fond of the idea, too. One of his Discworld books, possibly "Witches Abroad", began with the acknowledgement that we can never be sure about "the beginning"; all we can tell is "the story so far."

Delurking because I love Summer in Orcus and the speculation here...
Does anyone else get the sense that the Queen in chains is(a stand-in for) Summer's mother? Sending out wasps to destroy wondrous things - like forbidding Summer learning to ride or doing other "dangerous", wondrous things? And her heart's desire to save the wondrous things - to experience them back in her world, and how she needs to convince the queen/mom to let her. Maybe take the queen out of her chains and her motjer out of her fears. SOmehow the forrester seemed to point me in that diection.

I was wondering if the Queen in Chains is the girl who became a dragon, but didn't have a dragon's heart to go with it. In chains because of being a dragon's body, uncontrolled by that heart...

But I'm not as sure about the Queen being a stand-in for Summer's mother, because that implies a much more, mm, destructive sort of abuse than the problem her mother has. The active murder and casual violence doled out by the Houndbreaker, the wasps of the Queen, all seem the opposite of Summer's mother, who wants to protect and swaddle and keep things locked in safely.

If anything, the stand-in for Summer's mother is, well, Summer. Who has to learn to not become her mother in turn to her friends, even when the dangers are REAL and IMMINENT, not just imaginary or potential.

I was listening to Richard Thompson's Calvary Cross while I was reading Ch. 15 and got a powerful emotional rush when I got to this line: '"This is why she sent you, Summer-cub," [Glorious] said.' I'm not sure what the emotion was, perhaps related to the the longing for home that CS Lewis discusses in The Weight of Glory, but I felt it as an affirmation. "This is why she sent you."

Then a few lines down Glorious says, "But I smell her [Baba Yaga] even under this. Like clean stone under rotten meat." Well, OK, this is not the Baba Yaga I'm acquainted with.

Going back to the Baba Yaga question, I'd be hard put to chase it down, but if I'm remembering right, not all the folklore about her has her as an unmitigated monster. Most of her legendary behavior is monstrous, but I think some folk stories have her tricked into granting favors, or even capriciously favoring some supplicants if they complete tasks or chores for her.

...

(And with a little bit of Googling, I discover some references to the story of Vasilissa the Beautiful, a kind of cross between Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, where after Vasilissa completes Baba Yaga's tasks, she saves Vasilissa by giving her a magic skull lantern which burns up the evil stepmother and the stepsisters - simultaneously helpful and vicious.)

Kindness is sometimes cruel. Justice is sometimes mean. There's a phrase I've read that goes something like "an old testament man/sense of justice". My memory indicates it's in Westerns and was equated with Frontier Justice equated with lynch mobs, posses and other forms of DIY law keeping. See also: "tough, but fair" and "rough justice."

So far, "Summer in Orcas" has put Baba Yaga firmly in the "tough, but fair" category.

Huh. The discussion at the end of this chapter puts Zultan and the Queen-in-Chains in a different relationship.

I had thought of her as a distant evil ruler, like the White Witch, and him as her evil henchman, but if he's in control and she's his weapon, that's a very different story, and maybe calls for a different kind of resolution.

I really like the direction this discussion of Zoltan is going with the setting. We've seen a lot of Evil Overlords get overthrown from their reign of terror, but not nearly so many...roving bands of terrorists with long-term destructive effects, as it were. It's different, and it makes me chew over some of the various ways in which evil can manifest. I like.

I had been somewhat suspicious of the Priestess in the last chapter, then went to thinking she must be OK, as Summer did, and then...

It occurs to me that it's pretty rare for the experience of a concussion to be accurately described in a book. Even a mild bang on the head can be, well, like that. Lots of books, like nearly all movies and TV shows, indulge the conceit that people can be hit hard on the head without consequence other than a plot-convenient length of unconsciousness. The reality is that most people hit hard enough to experience more than a few seconds of unconsciousness would take weeks or months to make a recovery, some of them would be permanently impaired, and some of them would die.

(Let's not even get into the scale of PTSD which most fantasy heroes and heroines should have from their travails.)

I think that's a pretty fair assessment of what chapter 23 did to me too. But if chapter 23 was a shock to me, chapter 24 is the one that rearranged the world. We finally get to meet Zultan, who is not what I would have expected. And we find out a bit more about Grub, who I now exceedingly strongly suspect is a parasitized actual grub.

Also, mysterious antelope woman.

I also think that it might be interesting and worthwhile to compare and contrast elements of Summer in Orcus and Black Dogs once we get a bit farther in. I heartily recommend the latter by the way, too.

On why Zultan killed all the dogs: "Because they would have forgiven me. Unbearable thought, isn't it?"

That line made me flinch, both for all the times I've felt like that, and the times I've seen others unable to stomach any hint of forgiveness or mercy. This is the chapter that's hit me the hardest so far.

This chapter answers one of the questions I had at the end of ch. 25; the antelope women did somehow manage to reproduce, despite starting out in Orcus with only three women. I had wondered if the one who met Summer was one of the original three, which she still may be, but not necessarily. I'm still wondering how they managed to reproduce. Parthenogenesis, perhaps?

I also note that the ((temporarily?) divided) company now numbers seven; Summer, the weasel, Reginald, Glorious, Ankh, Ounk, and the unnamed antelope woman. Two more to go?

Tom Whitmore @229: See previous discussion at 129 - 137. I'm counting only speaking characters, but there are other plausible opinions. If the valet finches all together count as one (seeing as how they are a group mind), then we're at eight.

The weasel had to leave her back at the Great Pipes because he was choking on the incense smoke. Otherwise she might have had some help with escaping earlier. (I got confused about this too and had to go back and see where they got separated.)

Ah; right. Now I remember. (A weasel would have been very useful... if Zoltan hadn't sniffed it out right away. Which he probably would have -- he's a Dog, after all -- even if the Antelope Woman "overlooked" it like she did Summer's other pocket contents.)

Pendrift #224: And then there's Summer's response: She did not understand, but she wasn’t sure if it was a grown-up thing, and she would understand when she was older, or if it was an evil thing, and she would never be able to wrap her head around it.

Yes, it is.
------
Also, Ursula mentioned else-web (I think in her LJ) that she is planning to double up the chapter-posting the end of December so that she can finish it this year instead of the first week of January.

Clifton #240: I had the same feeling, but Chapter 27 has eased that a fair bit. They'd already identified the threat, collected allies, learned who the major players are, and met some of them. Now they've got their wasp, and they have a basic idea of what to do with it. Doubling up on the installments to finish in December suggests there will be a dozen-odd more chapters, and given the pace of the plot so far I can believe we'll get a decent resolution.

SiO still seems to be a textually short work; I haven't been keeping track of wordcount, but I suspect it might end up about novella size.

Musings on the plot: I find it striking that the wasp capture not only happened offscreen, but was apparently accomplished by the "is that a character?" valet birds. I'm also wondering whether the antelope woman will eventually "pull a Gollum" and be key to the resolution.

And, of course, the author has been distinctly cagey about exactly what the Queen-In-Chains is; Chekhov's Gun would suggest the "girl who became a dragon" (which could be a story in itself), but I can't see how those wasps fit into that.

The wasps of our world don't have queens, but of course Orcus isn't our world... and on the gripping hand, why are the wasps doing what they are doing? Does some benefit accrue to their controller, or for that matter to the wasps? If they're doing it to reproduce, are they actually being controlled by anyone, or just another species that's wandered into Orcus? I still suspect that Grub is a big piece of that puzzle, but don't yet know what he connects to.

I love the theme in this story of Summer taking note of "magic words" used by adults in particular situations, and applying them appropriately. This is definitely a life skill that will be applicable after she gets home. (A factor often missing from portal fantasies!)

Well, they have a direction to go to find the queen-in-chains. That makes me think the road trip will end soon. We have about eight installments left and Summer just found her inner power when rescuing Glorious.

And I am now seriously impressed with Summer. Not that I wasn't before, you understand, but her confidence has clearly grown by leaps and bounds already.

Knowing Ursula's writing in general, I expect the climax will be suitably impressive even if we know it's not that far away now. On a meta, and purely speculative level, since Summer in Orcus is response to a lot of other portal fantasies, I wonder if Summer will manage to accomplish anything massively politically changing for Orcus or not. I'll be quite interested to see how it turns out.

And, despite what Ursula has said on the matter, this is definitely Hugo-worthy already.

It occurs to me that we still don't know what Summer's "heart's desire" actually is... or if she's already receved it! If it was to be strong enough to stand up to her mother, or just to see outside the walls her mother has put around her....

I suspect Summer's heart's desire is to be able to stand up to her mother or manage her mother or get breathing space from her mother. Or just some level of independence/adulthood/authority - which involves standing up to her mother and managing the fall out from it. This is based on the fact that Summer used good business practices and the Antelope Woman's demeanor to thwart the house hunters.

Which brings me to something else. I suspect Summer's mother is an Antelope Woman, too, (or some mix of Antelope Woman and Hound Breaker) but Summer is not. Which is where the ice in her heart came from when she realized the Antelope Woman had betrayed them. Summer had thought Antelope Woman might act better/less chaotic if she'd been treated better/been included more.

In a stereotypical portal fantasy, the child protagonist winds up in a fantasy world, gets caught up in The Biggest Socio-Political Problem of the World, and, with the support of the locals, learns and trains and saves the world. Becoming royalty is optional. Summer in Orcus has a bit of that, certainly, but also subverts that.

Yes, she is, essentially, the head of a small band of local Orcusians, however she's not looking to Save the World, so much as she is to help her new friends and help the Frog Tree. In another story, she would have been the one to orchestrate the capture of the wasp, even if she didn't personally accomplish it. In this story, it was the valet birds, off screen. While the wasp capture was going on, she escaped from the clutches of Zultan. In another story, she would have found a way to subvert one of the guards, or take advantage of a weakness. In this story, she escapes with the help of the antelope woman, who has her own reasons.

However the story ends, I know I'll be happy with it. But, because of all this, I wonder if the end result will be that only a part of the regime is changed. Even if it's the case that the big bad is defeated, castles don't immediately come crashing down, and life doesn't instantly change for everyone. There are others who are positioned to move into a power vacuum. And, even if she facilitates a massive change, she may not, personally, accomplish it. (Although she might. One of the joys of serialized storytelling is suspense. Suspense and speculation. Two of the joys of serialized storytelling are suspense and speculation. I'll come in again.)

What she can and almost certainly will do, though, is at least make the world a little better — hopefully better enough for the Frog Tree's tadpole — and gain her heart's desire, which, like Lila, I think is effective personal agency.

KeithS #252: I think a lot of that is down to her not being a Big Damn Hero or even a Magical Prodigy. Re: Clifton #253, she is certainly, a disruptive element intruding from outside Orcus, which was likely part of Baba Yaga's intention (and a couple of in-world characters have said as much). Even if she's not saving the world single-handedly, she's still driving the plot, and this wasp thing actually does seem to be a major threat to Orcus, so dealing with that would reasonably qualify as "saving the world" for the moment. As for Zoltan -- Summer's just told the people of Orcus exactly what he is -- he might well be dealt with by someone else, or the wasps might be necessary to his survival.

If she succeeds, indeed castles won't automatically come down, and neither will the City of Dogs be easily rebuilt.¹ Some of the marvels will be lost forever... but others will recover or be remade, and new marvels will arise in time. But comments from the natives makes clear that Orcus has seen empires rise and fall before. And that there are plenty of species (and powerful individuals) around, who'd be happy to start hunting spider-horse riders if they didn't have to worry about Zoltan bringing the QiC in for large-scale destruction. And then they'd start rebuilding things, once the current crop of marauders has been neutralized.

Re Chapter 28: Well, it didn't take long at all for the antelope woman's other shoe to drop. Of course, she may yet come back and stir things up again.

¹ That said, I can believe there might be refugee Dogs that the Houndbreaker missed. I find myself wondering what would happen to dogs of our world who were brought to Orcus.

It may be worth noting that the Antelope Woman's action was aimed specifically towards Glorious, and she has good reason for animosity thereof. If Summer had been unable to prevent the house-hunters taking him, the rest of the party could have carried on the quest without him.

Of course, Glorious likely has a major role to play at the climax, so as well Summer did save him. It also seems likely that the Antelope Woman still has a part to play, and possibly the fact that she did not betray the party in general will be important in enabling her to play it.

Clifton #256: Yeah, but they actually won against a bunch of the spider-horses and riders plus Grub. With only one-and-a-fraction casualties, and the one was a professional guard. Of course, they're now facing Zoltan; the question is what he can do by himself; does he actually have the QiC handy, or can he summon her? And if he does... will it do him any good?

Also, it seems Grub wasn't directly linked to the wasps after all, but to a separate abomination entirely.

I liked the parallel between the weasel, "... groom[ing] himself over and over, which only made his fur look worse ..." and Summer "...wip[ing] at her face and arms over and over, until Ounk took it away from her and said, 'Enough.'"

I also had a moment of recognition.

“Do you wish us to fight?” asked Ounk, as calmly as if she were asking the time of day, and not do you wish us to die?

Summer watched the realization spread over the goose-guard’s face, and then Ounk dropped her head an inch and said, quietly, "I will go with you to the end."

Ouch.

What that reminded me of was how, after my cat Genevieve died, it took me nearly a year to stop looking for her in her favorite spot by the foot of the bed, where she'd spent her last few years. She was badly arthritic, and we got her a nice soft pad to lay on, and she pretty much stayed there except for eating, drinking, and using the litterbox. And every time I looked and she wasn't there, it hurt all over again.

I was thinking about how Grub's wight fly got defeated so quickly that it hardly seemed to have served a role in the story, and then I remembered what Ounk said: that the decisive action was clipping its wings, because it would have been unstoppable once it took to the air.

This might be foreshadowing something about the Queen-in-Chains.

It might also be saying something about Summer's relationship with her mother.

Paul A. #272: thinking about how Grub's wight fly got defeated so quickly that it hardly seemed to have served a role in the story

The thing is, most things in this story happen quickly, with significant points or character developments found in nearly every scene. Here we have Ankh's death -- but even before that, consider this: Summer was in position to slash its wings, because she was already attacking the molting Grub -- not just reacting to incoming attacks. No, not a Big Damn Hero, but still taking initiative in the fight.

Ursula's handling of the episodic format is giving me serious lessons in pacing and "moving the story".

Oh. Oh man. I was right, but I was right in a very shallow and basic "Ah, I see this twist coming, I look forward to it," and then it's like a rollercoaster where even if you can see the turn, it still makes your stomach drop and takes you so much further than you expected.

Nothing in this story is going as expected. And yet, somehow everything is inevitable. Ursula is very good at asking the question, "Why would this be happening? What might explain it?" and coming up with out-of-the-box, utterly plausible answers.

By now we have seen the Grace in action, and it was the key to the very climax of the story. I suspect that this may also be the heart's desire that Summer was promised: The power to comfort her mother, to ease the distress that drives her.

Hmm. She started the tale by picking up three things: First the lock, which proved key to the tale's climax. Lastly the tadpole seed, which fulfilled her first goal within Orcus. The weasel saved her life afterwards, but it was not lost; I wonder what will happen to it (did we ever learn the weasel's gender?) as Summer returns to her world.

I guess I wasn't that far wrong in 280. And I see Baba Yaga is also trope-aware. Not a monkey's paw, indeed....

What a satisfying end to a very satisfying story. Ursula, if you read this... thank you. (And is this a novel or a novella? Why? Oh, no reason. Just wondering....) &LT;gazing speculatively at Hugo ballot>

I think the lock is about coping mechanisms and how you can't judge a tool without considering how it is used - it was maladapted to Summer's situation, and imposed on her without her consent, but for the Queen-in-Chains it was appropriate and helpful, accepted willingly.

Bruce, #290: If Summer hadn't lied to her mother, she'd have been locked up in inpatient therapy until she (1) turned 18 and (2) managed to lie convincingly enough to the shrink. I had the same kind of hovering, overprotective, "lock her up in a golden cage to keep her SAFE" parents that Summer's mother is. And many's the time I lied to them when I knew their response to the truth would be the kind of massive overreaction that Summer's mother has been shown capable of having.

I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how much Summer was changed by her quest, the world she has to live in did not change at all and she still has to live there. At least for a few more years.

I also was a bit sorry that Summer had to come back and immediately lie to her mother. But - Summer has changed from the beginning of the book, when she hesitated about what she should and shouldn't say. On her return, she recognized the necessity and acted decisively. There's no internal narrative so we can't be sure, but I'd like to think she lied not so much from fear of her mother's reaction, as because the truth would make her mother very unhappy and do her no good.

Am I reading too much into this to see a parallel between the Queen-in-Chains' situation and the decision Summer and her mother may someday have to make, if her mother's mental illness continues to progress?

Lila #297: We don't actually know that much about Summer's mother, but I'd be damn wary of dismissing her fears as "mental illness". As pointed out above, many parents have entirely rational reasons to be terrified for their children's welfare. It's not paranoia if someone's really are out to get you, or even if they were.

Excellent. Just excellent. The twists and turns of the entire story constantly kept me surprised. Pleasantly surprised from the standpoint of a reader, even if sometimes unpleasantly from the standpoint of "oh no, poor Summer!"

I don't mind Summer lying to her mother at all, because it was the right thing to do.

The climax being quiet dialog and compassion, rather than being a big action scene worked very well for me. Compassion and humanity are far more important, in the end, than waving a sword around. Tolkien would be proud.

The ending was a very good ending, and a very right ending to the story. Summer's confidence has grown, which has honed the tools she uses to cope with her mother and the world in general.

OtterB, #296: Perhaps more to the point, here are the questions Summer's mother asked:
- Why is the gate open?
- You didn't see anyone, did you?
- You didn't go anywhere, did you?

I don't see any answer she could give to any of these that isn't a lie, which would not have immediately gotten her accused of lying or worse. It's like in Every Heart a Doorway -- when children go thru a portal and come back and try to tell anyone what happened to them, they are not believed.

Lila, #297: I agree with Dave about this, although for a different reason. Irrationality on a single topic is not the same thing as mental illness. We all have things about which we are irrational; sometimes we recognize it, sometimes we don't, but outside of that we're perfectly functional. The problem comes in when one's irrationality is affecting someone else's life in a negative way.

It is pretty clear that Summer's mother's irrationality is affecting Summer's life in a negative way, Lee -- at least from Summer's perspective. That doesn't mean it rises to the level of "mental illness."

Tom, #302: That was my point. It's a problem, and not just from Summer's perspective either; her mother is crippling her ability to develop mature judgment and valuable life skills. But it's not a mental illness. It's much closer to the attitude my own parents had, which boiled down to a complete lack of perspective about probabilities. If something bad could happen, they would talk themselves into believing it would happen, and then nothing could shake them out of it. Example: I was forbidden to go anywhere near a squirrel because OMG IT MIGHT BE RABID!!! Never mind that there hadn't been a case of squirrel-borne rabies in our area in half a century or more, it was always their first thought about any squirrel.

I was surprised it was on the ballot (I nominated the illustrator for Best Pro Artist, but didn't nominate the book because I nominated it last year)... but Ursula Vernon posted on File770.com that she had extensive conversations with the Hugo Admins (she wanted to be scrupulous and not take a nomination that wasn't legit) and they determined that the illustrations transformed the work sufficiently that it was eligible this year, and that both Ursula Vernon AND Lauren Henderson would get the Hugo should they win.

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